rachaelizabeth

“little decisions over and over again that eventually would add up to something bigger.”

his post is written about tragedy and picking up the peices of life, but the part i quoted above is something that is true of the regular spiritual and emotional life and very much needed…

suppose a girl reads and underlines and enjoys the book captivating…the part that speaks to her the most is where a woman’s greatest fear is that god is holding out on her. it rings true in her heart. she fears she has to make a life for herself or else no one else will do it. no one cares. no one knows her deepest desires and how she burns for them. she must make it happen for herself or it simply won’t happen. now lets say that her biggest desire is to find her “one”, her true love…her counterpart…her husband. but he is no where to be found. she prays but god doesn’t seem to hear. or he does and doesn’t care. she prays that god would help her with this feeling of not trusting him and to know he’s not holding out on her…but one evening she just has the urge to go out, to look pretty, to try to attract eyes so she gets all dolled up and goes to the bar and puts on her flirty face…it feels better than just staying home being unseen and feeling desolate. in her desperation at the bar, she quickly starts making life mistakes that burn her and send her in a downward spiral of more darkness, she even forgets what she read in captivating, of what she knew about herself…all she does is feel and act. and she makes a mess. a royal mess.

now the thing for her to learn is the art of knowing herself and god. she needs to learn that when the next cold lonely evening comes and she wants to go out, that what’s really happening, deep down, is that lie is at play in her. the lie that she is alone and god is holding out on her. she needs to learn to identify her feelings and see with spiritual eyes what’s happening. and this is a good start but it’s not the end. then she must make herself stay home. whatever it takes, stay home. and dig into prayer about why she really feels this way about herself and god and her future. and she needs to sow more prayers about this not being true of her, believing that god is holding out on her. she needs to make it hers and that happens on these on long winter nights.

so not only does she not go out and make a bigger mess of herself, but she digs into her own heart and learns it and sows seeds of truth in this field of lies that feel very much true. and eventually overtime, doing this over and over again, everytime she is tempted, she changes. she sees more clearly. she finds god finding her on those nights. she knows him better and trusts his goodness in her life. she finds depth. she is no longer shallow and controlled by her impulses not knowing where they come from or what they mean.

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i could go on and on about this situation but there’s many more situations like this where we have to learn what’s going on in us, learn what we’re feeling, learn what the truth is, and learn to hold onto it with all our might when we don’t want to and just giving in is so much easier…

it gets easier…it becomes so worth it…it’s where our life is at. those bars or any other place we run to become ridiculous to us. it’s so not what real life is.

there’s more at play in these situations too, but i just wanted to point out the fact that we learn good things about ourselves and god in various ways but if we don’t do the hard work of actually appropriating them into a moment when it’s needed, when that part of our heart is activated and we need to respond accordingly with truth, then we are the people who look into a mirror and then immediately forgets what we look like. we are the people who sit in church our whole lives hearing sermons but are still drinking milk and not eating solid foods. we are the catepillar refusing to go into the coccoon.

this is what life/the christian life is all about. if we aren’t doing this then we are walking around blindly, never waking up and life never seems to make sense or happen for us. this is what my life is about. it’s still hard work to decide to not what part of me is screaming to do and i don’t always succeed, but that failure reinforces for next time that that is indeed what i want to do because the other is empty.

there’s a lot of spiritual truths that come into play but this is a beginning…

this journey is a beautiful one and so worth it. it makes my heart come alive because it’s untangled. i can breathe easier.. trusting in god is the most peaceful place to be once we win the fight to trust in him rather than go our own way. i love my life. i love what he’s done and what he’s making me. i feel more alive and more myself. and i’m excited for how easier things feel inside of me and will continue to feel as he puts his fingers on other places. there’s so much to learn. it’s a real art. it’s the art of the human heart whether we are christians or not. being a christian just makes our hearts and this life make sense.

i love how he set everything up :)